"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."
Lord Kelvin

Publications

Competitive Intensity and Corruption Risks. Statistical Analysis of Hungarian Public Procurement – 2009-2015. Data and Descriptive Statistics

Publications, Reports

3 March 2016 / 18 May 2016

The report examines data from Hungarian public procurement between 2009-2015. The data from 127,776 contracts and 135,300 awardees were used for the analysis. The data were downloaded from the website of the Hungarian Public Procurement Authority (http://www.kozbeszerzes.hu/). The Public Procurement Bulletin available online interface was used for data collection, and after data clarification procedures, the data were structured into a database. The data of analysed public tenders are downloadable from the website managed by CRCB read more

Impact Assessments, Public Consultation and Legislation in Hungary

Publications, Reports, , ,

This research explores important characteristics of the Hungarian legislation from 2010 through publicly accessible online administrative data. Our focus is measuring the quality of legislation, analysing its trends since 2006. The CRCB published its first analysis in July 2014 on the period of 1998-2012, which examined the quality of the Hungarian legislation. Our reports are not simple repetitions and updates. We extended and deepened our analysis in several areas. For instance, conserning the report of read more

Rent Extraction and the Rule of Law. The Case of Hungarian Residence Bonds’ Law

Publications, Research Notes, , ,

 

This research note examines the history and background of the Hungarian Residence Bonds’ Law. We conclude that the residence bond legislation is an example of the violation of the rule of law, of its connection with rent-seeking, and of possible appearance of political corruption. This case is a clear manifestation of what form, what special means, and what consequences political favoritism can have and can operate with in a given read more

Integrity Pacts – Preventing Fraud in Public Procurement Through Civil Society Oversight Mechanisms

Presentations, Publications

 
Agnes Czibik presented CRCB’s research results at Transparency International Croatia’s conference ‘Integritiy Pacts – Preventing Fraud in Public Procurement Through Civil Society Oversight Mechanisms‘ in Zagreb on 10th June 2015.
The presentation gave an overview on the measurable corruption risk differences of EU-funded and nationally funded public procurement procedures and it showed some network characteristics of Hungarian organisations with high corruption read more

Data publication for workshop at Big Data for Policy conference

Databases, Presentations, Publications, , ,

 
A dataset and codes for analysis are released to support the workshop held by Mihály Fazekas at the conference: “Policy-making in the Big Data Era: Opportunities and Challenges” at the University of Cambridge on the 17th of June 2015. The data and codes are solely for demonstrating some interesting ways structured public procurement data can be used to measure favouritism in government contracting.
Presentation slides
UK government supplier data (2009-2013): Public procurement supplier level dataset, halfyearly aggregation, contracts awarded by UK central read more

No public procurement corruption in Hungary? Analysis of the decisions of the Hungarian Courts 2009-2014

Publications, Research Notes

 

This research note examines court orders issued in and after 2009 in Hungary. The aim of the analysis was to identify crimes related to corruption in public procurements in order to inspect the validity of the CRCB’s composite corruption risks indicator. A court order was examined if it met the following criteria: it was issued in 2009 or later, it was about corruption related crimes and it contained the word “közbeszerzés” (“public procurement”), “pályázat” (“tender”) or “tender” read more

How much money did Közgép Ltd win in 2013?

Publications, Research Notes

Four online portals tried to estimate in the beginning of 2014 the total amount of money that ’Közgép’ group, owned by former close friend (Lajos Simicska) of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, won in public procurement in 2013. The four sources (Portfolio.hu, Átlátszó, K-Monitor, Hír24) calculated four different sums. There was more than half a billion Euro difference between the highest and the lowest estimates. Given that public procurement records are open to the public, it is evidently read more

ANTICORRP Conference on public procurement and corruption risks

Presentations, Publications

The Corvinus University of Budapest (CUB) organized a conference about the ANTICORRP research program, the Hungarian government’s anti-corruption policy and the new public procurement law on 12th May 2015. After István János Tóth’s (CRCB) opening and presentation about the ANTICORRP program’s objectives and results, dr. László Kovács (Prime Minister’s Office) presented the most important changes in the new Hungarian public procurement law. Mihály Fazekas (CUB, CRCB) highlighted some recent results of measuring corruption risks of public procurement in the read more

EU funds and corruption risks in Hungary

Presentations, Publications

In the past few weeks, the European Commission found serious problems in the allocation of EU funded public procurement contracts in Hungary and the suspicion of cartel was also raised. According to the researches of CRCB, the corruption risks for EU funded contracts are slightly higher than national ones on the European level, but in Hungary the risks are significantly higher. These additional corruption risks are in connection with the low quality of the institutional environment in the country. read more

Mapping high-level corruption risks in Spanish public procurement

Publications, Reports

Alejandro Ferrando Gamir

Abstract

High-level corruption and fraud has had an increased impact on the social and political debate in Spain, especially since the beginning of the financial crisis when several cuts in social spending were made. Greater attention is being paid to where and how the government spends its public resources. This paper explores the extent and forms of political corruption in Spanish public procurement. Its main contribution is the rich analytical discussion of read more